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Education

Suzanne Cooke, RSCJ Discusses Sacred Heart Education on EWTN

An education that transforms ... for a lifetime

Many Religious of the Sacred Heart have a dual vocation: to religious life and to teaching. Their lives and their ministries, all that they do, is done with the heart of an educator, whether it is in a school setting or elsewhere. This commitment to educate children to empower them to have a transformative influence on their own lives and on the greater community stems to our founder, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat.

Madeleine Sophie Barat had a rare aspiration for her time: to educate girls in a manner similar to the education received by boys. She saw women as the repairers of the torn fabric of society in France following the French Revolution and set about establishing a transformative education that would help them accomplish the task. In 1805, just five years after the Society of the Sacred Heart was founded, members drafted the first Plan of Studies to ensure consistently high standards in all Sacred Heart schools. The Plan was modified periodically, but always with a goal of educating the “whole person” – long before that concept became popularly used.